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ArcGIS name changes… and the path of least resistance.
Just a quick post and some thoughts: ESRI has recently announced that they will be changing their ArcGIS product names. As you can see (below) the names are more wordy, but crucially they make more sense. Some will argue (I’ve seen the twitter threads!) that this cosmetic change is pointless, but I disagree. Not everyone using ESRI’s products is a ‘power user’ and whilst there are those who would argue that ArcView (ArcGIS for Desktop Basic) is a pointless product which serves no ‘real’ (proper maps are done by ArcInfo and ArcEditor, apparently) purpose. I would argue it is useful tool for many companies and for ESRI it serves as the ‘gateway drug’ to their product line.
I work in an office that uses ArcView (ArcGIS for Desktop Basic) extensively in it’s projects. We’re not the ‘super-power’ users that some GIS professionals would like people who use ArcGIS to be. However the product allows us to fit in with other industries/workflows (and some of those mythical power users too!) as well the other professional tools we use on the job. We do not need the powerful features of ArcInfo and ArcEditor (not yet anyway!). We are also often constrained to using certain products within our projects by the client.
Increasingly in our line of work and client list ArcGIS compatibility is a requirement not an optional extra. Let me be clear about this though, we are not ‘cheap’ for wanting to use the ‘basic’ version of ArcGIS, we just have different requirements.
Personally I think what might happen next is that ESRI will look at the prices of all these products and do some price ‘adjustments’ (perhaps starting with a price reduction ArcGIS for Desktop Basic). Why?
Well there are many products out there that do what ArcGIS for Desktop Basic do either for free or at a far cheaper price, and with more features. ESRI I hope would like to keep those customers so that when they are ready and in need of more features the path of least resistance is up ESRI’s product line and not someone else’s.
Agree or disagree? Or do you want to raise a further issue? Use the comments below or drop me a message!
ESRI UK Conference – My Presentations
My first presentation on Day One was entitled the “10 Minute City” to a largish group of people who made the trek to the basement instead of hearing about exciting developments in ArcGIS 10.1. Honestly, thank you for coming down and listening to us all, not just myself. VIDEO TO VIEW HERE After initial issues relating to my video not playing on ESRI laptops and codecs (I’ve never figured out codecs all I can say is it worked on my PCs and their offices ones too).
Here I demonstrated a workflow that used CityEngine and ArcGIS as the pivot points in creating a very basic city model for visualisation and analytical purposes. I hope this went down well and if people have any more questions about it (I know I skipped some of the detail) then please don’t hesitate to contact me.
My second presentation entitled “Games and the City” was to a much smaller audience, I gave a live demonstration and an insight into a workflow we’ve been looking at using specially built software with assistance of InfoLab21.
My quick quiz about what game and system this screen shot was from got no correct answers unfortunately (and I was going to give the person who guess correctly a snazzy GDL memory stick!).
Perhaps you would like to guess? (answer in the comments below, no prize though sorry!)
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| Source: RetroGamer.net |
Both presentations should be available to upload from the ESRI site soon, I’ll also try and post it here soon.
Apologies to those of you who saw the presentation and saw it stall at one stage. I’ll blame it on the lack of a mouse mat, the awkward position of the mouse on the podium oh and my shakey hand due to nerves!
Posted in 3D, City Creation, conference, datasets, dwf, dwg, esri, Featured, geography, GIS, masterplanning, planning, Visualisations | No Comments »
Kindle 3 : Some Hidden Features
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| Mmm keyboard… |
- shift + alt + m = play minesweeper (from homescreen)
- GoMoku: press G from Minesweeper
- alt + shift + G = screenshot (plug your Kindle in via the USB and navigate to the folder ‘documents’ screenshots are GIF and named something like “screen_shot-******.gif”)
- alt + G = screen refresh
- alt + home = Kindle Store
- alt + top row of letters on keyboard = numbers 1-0
- Press menu to check the time
- Press menu on homescreen to see available memory
- To change the primary dictionary by going to settings then menu
- Standby (uses minimal power is my understanding) Quick switch of the power slide.
- To turn off kindle 3 (i.e switch off the screen as well) by pressing and holding the power slide for 7 seconds
- To reset the kindle by pressing and holding the power slide for 15 seconds (restart is also in settings then menu)
- alt + B = add and remove bookmarks
- shift + Sym = Turn text to speech on and off
- set cursor down the page to start text to speech from there
- right arrow on nav controller = skip to next chapter
- left arrow on nav controller = skip to previous chapter
- alt + space = turn music on and off
- alt + f = skip to next track
- Plug your Kindle 3 into the computer with the USB.
- Open the Kindle drive that is now in your displayed with your removable drives, in the root (i.e. not in another folder) create a folder called “pictures” within that folder you can create a number of other folders (think of them as collections), then add your images/pictures to this (or these) folders. I’ve only tried Jpegs and they work fine.
- Once finished safely unplug the kindle and then press “alt” and “z” on the homescreen, this will refresh the screen and add your new folders.
- Click on the folder/collection and Image Viewer should launch.
- f = full-screen
- q = zoom in
- w= zoom out
- e = reset zoom
- c = actual size
- r = rotate
- nav controller = pan
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| As Requested… by kuroikaze85 |
Update (1st October 2010): Acknowledgements
Apologies for not posting this sooner, I only compiled this list for my benefit (and limited followers) but now others are interested!
Articles and posts that made this page possible and some more I’ve found after I posted this list. If you want some more technical stuff you could look at these but be careful. NOTE Not all relate to Kindle 3 (latest version):
- Kindle Bonus Tips from 15th January 2008 (I guess in regards to the first Kindle)
- Kindle 2 Easter Eggs Not sure of date…
- Engadget Kindle Easter Eggs from 28th December 2007
- Hacking the Kindle part 3 from 21st December 2007
- Kindle Tricks and Hidden Features Kindleboard.com Thread – 23rd January 2009
- K3 FAQ plus shortcuts and tricks Kindleboard.com Thread – 2nd September 2010
- Kindle 3 Keyboard Shortcuts et al From Down the Hill – blog.diannegorman.net – 5th September 2009
There are more sites with information just goto Google like I did and search for “Kindle hidden” or “kindle easter eggs”
Update (1st October 2010): This post was featured on Geek.com thanks Matthew Humphries!
Update (2nd October 2010): This post was linked to on Teleread.com Ebook Roundup from Resource Shelf
Update (3rd October 2010): This post was linked to on Mike Cane’s xBlog GeoPlanIT: Kindle 3 : Some Hidden Features
This Article now has a part 2 : Click Here
Off Topic: Flying with a baby, car seats and airplanes
Okay this is very off topic but my recent trip to Canada with my young family taught me something. I never thought about it before but travelling with a baby (mine being one year old) is a bit tricky. In fact it seems like she has more luggage than me!
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| Source: Britax |
Anyway lets get to the real issue and that is car seats. If you are travelling with a child and you have booked a seat it seems that many airlines require you to have a car seat…. aha this is where it gets tricky because very few will let you know what is acceptable. Add to that the fact that north american airlines have different rules and you have some issues! North America and Europe have different standards so its important you know what type of car seat to bring….
I haven’t got all the answers but here is what I know from my recent trip
Our car seat: Britax Eclipse http://www.britax.co.uk/car-seats/eclipse
Out to Canada flight:
- Check-in at BMI desk, a staff member called a supervisor to check our car seat. We were told it needed to be a five point harness and be able to secured with a lap belt.
- The hostess on the BMI domestic flight came and checked we knew how to install it and to ensure it was secure.
- Connecting in Heathrow was a nightmare try carrying a large car seat at speed through Heathrow (come to think of it try going at speed through Heathrow normally!).
- On the Air Canada flight again we were asked if we knew how to install it and someone then came to check it was secure…
Return to UK flight:
- Check in at Air Canada desk car seat wasn’t questioned…
- On the Air Canada flight an air hostess asked to see a red sticker, apparently North American car seats have some kind of sticker indicating compliance with a sticker. This being a UK one it has an orange sticker saying it complies with ECE R44/04 certification. I did say that this seat complied with Air Canada’s own rules (as stated by their sales team) we had enough trouble just getting them to tell us this… anyway we were allowed on after her supervisor (I think) looked at it and checked how it was secured.
- The BMI flight a member staff (ground crew)took our car seat and said they would get someone to install it for us, which was very nice until we got to our seat and they had left the strap that secured it twisted and very loose! (Make sure it is tight as turbulence might be an issue!). When we started to put our daughter in the seat the Air attendant said that he thought we should have her on our lap during take off and landing…. argh! Fortunately he said he would check and then never returned.
One more thing: I bought a device to drag our car seat around airports I can’t say how much this saved my back! It seems to fit most car seats (including our Britax Eclipse), this is it, I purchased it in Canada (at BabyDepot in Kitchener, Ontario http://www.thebabydepot.ca/) as I haven’t found it in the UK (anyone any ideas??). It’s called the GoGo Kidz Travelmate. Only thing I would say about it is that we had to take it off to fit through airport scanners and it has the worlds longest screw on it when people are tsk tsk ing behind you….
Before this trip I got the following emails first from Air Canada:
Thank you for your email.
For your forthcoming flight with your daughter, you will require a car seat. The car seat must ensure that item displays an ECE R44/04 certificate label which indicates that it complies with Standards Safety Regulations and requirements.
From April 2008, all child car seats that were manufactured before 1995 and approved to ECE R Standard Regulations 44/01 and 44/02 are no longer legal and must not be used.
You may not use a booster seat or cushion as it is not desgined for aircraft use.
I trust this is the information you require, and should you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Yours Sincerely
Customer Relations
Next from Britax:
Thank you for your email.
The CAA accept a child seat that is approved to the European Standard and suitable for use with a lap belt. However, as the ultimate responsibility for using the seat on the aircraft lies with the airline, we always recommend that you contact them for confirmation and check that the seat in question will fit (dimensionally) on their airline seat.
We have had positive feedback from users concerning use of the Freeway, Prince (or Fisher Price Forward facing Child Seat) on BA flights. Although the Eclipse and Renaissance technically comply with the above rules we have not had similar feedback from customers concerning these models.
Please note that FAA airlines are likely to have different regulations.
The dimensions of the seats are as follows:
Freeway, Prince
Width = 43cm
Height = 72cm
Length = 47cmEclipse
Width = 43 cm
Height = 65 cm
Length = 47 cmIn regards to regulations this is a legal requirement that we have to comply to and not a general decision, there is no worldwide regulation.
We do hope that this is of assistance to you.
HP DesignJet 500 and Windows 7: Yes it does work even without the HPGL2 card!
Updated (04/12/2012): To include information about how to get the 450c to work with Windows 8 after a conversation with @AlbanyDriver on twitter. I also think this technqiue will probably work for Windows 8 as well.
Updated (22/June/2012):
Updated (08/May/2010): this post was partially rewritten to clarify which file you should download.
Unbelievably this is the most popular post on my blog, I honestly get 1000+ hits a month just on this page. If you like it and have more to add please send me a message or add a comment below. Thank you for reading!
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| Source: hp.com |
Okay this is a quick one, if you have a HP DesignJet 500 without that HPGL2 card and want to upgrade to Windows 7 (or 8) or have done so and can’t seem to get it to work, try the following.
We use our HP DesignJet for all things GIS and AutoCAD so it’s important we have this working!
You may have noticed that HP only has Windows 7 drivers for the DJ500 with the HPGL2 card in the driver package called either:
- HP Designjet 500, 510, and 800 HP-GL/2 and HP RTL 32-bit Driver or
- HP Designjet 500, 510, and 800 HP-GL/2 and HP RTL 64-bit Driver
So don’t download those drivers, make sure you download the drivers from Vista equivalent (in my case Vista 32bit). This file is called either:
- HP DesignJet 500 PCL3GUI 32-bit Driver or
- DesignJet 500 PCL3GUI 64-bit Driver
Click here to go direct to the HP DJ 500 driver download site.
Add your printer in the usual way in Windows 7, (if you are adding it over the network you may want to look at my previous post).
After the install it will ask if you want to Print a Test Page, it was here that I was getting an error message (about the HP driver not being able to connect to the printer) and just assumed it wasn’t working. If you get an error message and no test page try this:
- Select the printer in the printer browser, and view the printer properties.
- On the page with the print test page button there is another button next to it called printing preferences, click on this and it should bring up a dialog box stating that the printer is now connected.
- Now try to print that test page.
Okay so I don’t know why I couldn’t print the test page straight off but accessing the designjets plotter preferences did help.
Again if this post is not clear, or you require any help, just let me know.
Have you got an HP 450C and want it to work with Windows 8 (32bit)? @AlbanyDriver got in contact and asked me if I could help, after some searching on forums about making it work on Windows 7, I suggested he used the Windows XP 32bit drivers which seemed to work!
Updated Link Added for my previous post adding printers over a network: http://geoplanit.blogspot.com/2010/01/very-slow-printer-dialog-boxes-in.html
Export attribute tables from ArcGIS to Excel.
Okay not the most exciting topics ever approached but hopefully this is useful.
- Open ArcMap and Excel
- ‘Right-Click’ on your polygon layer in ArcMap and select “Open Attribute Table”
- Now Click on the Options button and then “Select All”
- In the right left* hand grey column (see the small black arrow? click there) ‘Right-Click’ to see this menu:
- Now switch to a blank workspace in Excel and paste your data, voila!
Okay you can export this data as a file but after step 3, select ‘Export’ and select your file format dbase, txt, File and Personal Geodatabase tables. I tend not to use this method as I find copy and paste far simpler.
Updated: Click on the left column/border (in grey), thanks to Pepix for spotting my error, apologies for any confusion.
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